Salesforce is the latest to offer advice to salespeople. It called for better use of analytics and mobile and more help from colleagues.

The first “State of Sales” report by the San Francisco CRM giant includes findings that weren’t all surprising. Analytics help. Mobile helps. Collaboration helps. Technology helps. But it did confirm this -- salespeople need to be educated about each customer. The average B2B buyer is 57 percent of the way through the buy cycle before they even talk to salesperson, according to the Salesforce study.

Sales Empowerment

“It’s all about sales empowerment at end of the day,” said Sara Varni, senior vice president of marketing for the Salesforce Sales Cloud. “We want sales teams to be as productive as humanly possible. … Buyers are more sophisticated than ever. They have all of this information at their fingertips.”

Analytics matter. High-performing sales teams are 3.5 times more likely than underperforming teams to use sales analytics. Expect a 58 percent increase in sales analytics use from 2015 to 2016.

Mobile rocks. Top sales organizations are significantly more likely to use mobile sales apps. Nearly 60 percent of high-performing sales teams already use or are planning to use a mobile sales app (two times more than underperformers). Mobile sales app use will more than double in the next two years (125 percent growth). “Sales doesn’t stop when you’re on the road,” Varni told CMSWire.

Takes a village. High performers are nearly three times more likely than underperformers to view sales as 100 percent the responsibility of the entire organization. Winning teams are 4.7 times more likely than underperformers to be outstanding/very good at omnichannel sales interaction.

Technology rules. Strong sales teams are three times more likely to use functionality than underperforming teams. Top performers are nearly eight times more likely than underperformers to be heavy tech adopters.

As for analytics, 74 percent of sales leaders are currently using and planning to use analytics in the next 12 to 18 months.

In nine years at Salesforce, Varni said she’s seen analytics project go from laborious, time-consuming IT ticket requests to “incredibly powerful” tools that empower salespeople.

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